The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I: The Poems : Revised Second Edition
Newly revised, a collection of every poem the Irish poet approved for publication during his lifetime, grouped according to the work in which each first appeared, includes a preface and notes by a world-renowned Yeats scholar.
William Butler Yeats, whom many consider this century's greatest poet, began as a bard of the Celtic Twilight, reviving legends and Rosicrucian symbols. By the early 1900s, however, he was moving away from plush romanticism, his verse morphing from the incantatory rhythms of "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" into lyrics "as cold and passionate as the dawn." At every stage, however, Yeats plays a multiplicity of poetic roles. There is the romantic lover of "When You Are Old" and "A Poet to His Beloved" ("I bring you with reverent Hands / The books of my numberless dreams..."). And there are the far more bitter celebrations of Maud Gonne, who never accepted his love and engaged in too much politicking for his taste: "Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery, or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, / Or hurled the little streets upon the great, / Had they but courage equal to desire?" There is also the poet of conscience--and confrontation. His 1931 "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" ends: "Out of Ireland have we come. / Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carried from my mother's womb / A fanatic heart."
Yeats was to explore several more sides of himself, and of Ireland, before his Last Poems of 1938-39. Many are difficult, some snobbish, others occult and spiritualist. As Brendan Kennelly writes, Yeats "produces both poppycock and sublimity in verse, sometimes closely together." On the other hand, many prophetic masterworks are poppycock-free--for example, "The Second Coming" ("Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...") and such inquiries into inspiration as "Among School Children" ("O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"). And at his best, Yeats extends the meaning of love poetry beyond the obviously romantic: love becomes a revolutionary emotion, attaching the poet to friends, history, and the passionate life of the mind. --Kerry Fried
Before a reasoned, intelligent assessment of Yeats (or any other master poet such as Hardy, Frost,de la Mare, Wilbur, et al) can be made, one must ask the right preliminary question: What is Genius-level poetry? There are at least 6 primary components: 1)It withholds something from us at first, yielding its secrets slowly, like an attractive lover or an ocean (sand, shoreline, shallows, surfzone, shelf, offshore, blue depths);2)It surprises and satisfies simultaneously - it repays multiple re-readings: 'I knew that but I didn't know until now that I knew it'; 3) It is words set to life's music - it sounds, or sings, special, through appropriate rhythm and rhyme. Follow the music and the other senses follow along; follow the voice til you have no choice; 4)It is memorable, both in detailed words, metaphors, images, literary referents, phrasings, lines, sections/stanzas, and as a sum of things which exceeds the excellencies of the parts. It is memorizable. 5)It speaks to life's questions: what could be worse than answering questions no one is asking?; above all relevance synthesizes with reverence to create resonance. Its subject matter matters. Nothing is missing more in most poetry published today than lack of compression, resolution, depth: too much verse is a pretty pond acres wide, inches deep. Especially powerful verse has simplicity in perichoresis (interpenetration) with complexity or multiplicity, ambidextrously able to use telescope or microscope to bring the subject into focus for the reader. The best of Seuss appeals also to adults; the arcanest of Einstein, E=mc2, can even be grasped by children;Lastly,6) It fulfills its expectations and arrives: it reaches the reader at some point, in different ways at different times. Though woods are lovely, dark and deep;with miles to go before I sleep, there are still promises to keep. Yeats lovers will find all six of these criteria fulfilled consistently throughout the Collected Works; skeptics and seekers can objectively test Irish Airman Predicts His Death; Sailing to Byzantium; Song of Wandering Aengus; Innisfree and other typically anthologized masterpieces to see if they meet at least 4 of the 6 standards. I hope many new readers are pleasantly surprised and many old friends of Yeats come away with a new appreciation of what Ireland gave the world from 1865-1939. His 1923 Nobel Prize was not bestowed by biased eyes, but the award was nobly earned, though by so many undiscerned. --Reviewer: James Scott from El Cajon, CA United States
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